The Ohio Valley Conference announced its slate of basketball games on the ESPN Family of Networks for the 2008-09 season on Thursday.
The schedule includes 14 total games that will air on either ESPN2 or ESPNU during the year. The ESPN2 contests include a Valentine's Day battle between Tennessee State and Austin Peay and the OVC Tournament Men's Championship on March 7.
Additional games (non-conference) that will be broadcast on any television network will be announced at a later date. That will include the announcement of which network will air the OVC Women's Basketball Tournament Championship on March 7.
ESPNU launched on March 4, 2005 with the Southeast Missouri State/Eastern Kentucky OVC Tournament semifinal contest before the first event aired live on the network. The 24-hour college sports television network features more than 550 live events annually, including college football, college basketball and Olympic sports from more than 25 Division I conferences, as well as premier high school content. The network also has a wide-ranging, long-term agreement with the NCAA for enhanced coverage of 22 NCAA Championships. In addition, ESPNU offers comprehensive studio programming and replays the best games of the week from ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Regional Television.
ESPNU currently reaches more than 21 million homes through long-term carriage agreements with Time Warner, Charter, Cox, DIRECTV (Channel 609), EchoStar’s DISH Network (Channel 148), Verizon, AT&T, Insight Communications, Mediacom, and various other affiliates.
ESPNU is also available in high definition on ESPNU HD and online at ESPNU.com. In August 2007, it launched ESPNU Campus Connection, a multi-platform student-generated content initiative.
Currently, ESPN HD reaches more than 20 million subscribers and is available to more than 96 million homes and ESPN2 HD reaches more than 19 million subscribers and is available to more than 86 million homes.
In 2008, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD will deliver more than 12,000 hours in high definition including all of ESPN’s NASCAR coverage, NBA telecasts, MLS telecasts, MLB telecasts, college football telecasts, National Hot Rod Association races and coverage of NFL Monday Night Football. 100 percent of ESPN and ESPN2’s Bristol-based studio programming originates in high definition, including SportsCenter, NFL Countdown, NFL Monday Night Countdown, NFL Live, Monday Night Countdown, Baseball Tonight, Mike & Mike in the Morning and First Take. In addition to live sports programming, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD produce individual programs, movies and series.
2008-09 ESPN Family of Networks Basketball Television Schedule
Saturday, January 3 (Women's Basketball)
Eastern Illinois at Jacksonville State, 5 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday, January 3
Eastern Illinois at Jacksonville State, 7:30 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday, January 10
Austin Peay at Murray State, 2 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Thursday, January 15
UT Martin at Tennessee Tech, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday, January 17 (Women's Basketball)
Murray State at Tennessee Tech, 5 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Thursday, January 29
Tennessee State at Morehead State, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Thursday, February 5
UT Martin at Austin Peay, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Thursday, February 12
Southeast Missouri at Eastern Kentucky, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday, February 14
Tennessee State at Austin Peay, 6 p.m. CT (ESPN2)
Thursday, February 19
Tennessee State at Tennessee Tech, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Thursday, February 26
Morehead State at Murray State, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Friday, March 6
OVC Tournament Men's Semifinal #1, 6 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
OVC Tournament Men's Semifinal #2, 8 p.m. CT (ESPNU)
Saturday, March 7
OVC Tournament Men's Championship, 7 p.m. (ESPN2)